Michael Vickers
Biographic Data
| ID | 171978 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Michael Vickers |
| GIVEN NAMES | Michael |
| FAMILY NAME | Vickers |
| SIGNATURE | VICKERS M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Museum of the History of Science |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 75 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 122 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 75 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1970 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Antigone’s Creon and the Ephebic Oath
Some three years ago, in Sophocles and Alcibiades, I discussed the historical background to the Antigone, suggesting that a plot that takes an unburied corpse as its starting point was a reflection of events that took place at the end of the Athenians' Samian campaign of 440-439 BC, when enemy prisoners were allegedly crucified, clubbed to death and left unburied on Pericles' orders (Vickers 2008, 13-33).It was suggested that the play was a means…
Sophocles. The Theban Plays
Aristophanes and Alcibiades
Politics and Challenge
Euripides’ Ion was performed in 409 B.C. in order to strengthen the case for Alcibiades’ return from exile. There is a considerable overlap between the anecdotal tradition relating to Alcibiades, Pericles, and Aspasia and the characterization of Ion, Xuthus, and Creusa. Euripides puts across a pro-Alcibiadean message, excusing Alcibiades’ faults, both major and minor, rebutting charges that Alcibiades was of servile origin, promoting his religiou…
Articles
Fear and Loathing in Ancient Athens
Athens at the time of the Peloponnesian war was the arena for a dramatic battle between politics and religion in the hearts and minds of the people. Fear and Loathing in Ancient Athens, originally published in German but now available for the first time in an expanded and revised English edition, sheds new light on this dramatic period of history and offers a new approach to the study of Greek religion. The book explores an extraordinary range of…
An Enigmatic Terracotta Head From South India
Alcibiades and Melos
The dramatists were not the only writers to face up to Athens' problematic citizen and the issues to which his erratic career gave rise. Thucydides and Plato did so in their respective ways, but often employing the language of subliminal suggestion, of innuendo. The form in which Thucydides reports the discussion between the Athenians and the Melians before the Athenians began besieging Melos in the summer of 416 has long been a problem. In place…
Sophocles and Alcibiades
Literary historians have long held the view that the plays of the Greek dramatist, Sophocles deal purely with archetypes of the heroic past and that any resemblance to contemporary events or individuals is purely coincidental. In this book Michael Vickers challenges this view and argues that Sophocles makes regular and extensive allusion to Athenian politics in his plays, especially to Alcibiades, one of the most controversial Athenian politician…
Ancient Rome
"Was It Only Yesterday? The Last Generation of Nigeria's "Turawa
Trevor Clark, ed. Was It Only Yesterday? The Last Generation of Nigeria's Turawa. Bristol: British Empire Commonwealth Museum Press, 2002. xi + 352 pp. Photographs. Maps. Appendixes. Bibliography. 5 £25:00. Cloth. 5 £15:00. Paper. This is a remarkable book. Yet it may discomfit many Americans, for it makes clear why the boy scout approach to imperialism may in the end be more successful than the bluntly commercial variety. Indeed it is possible t…
Ethnic Politics and Ethnic Conflict
ETHNIC POLITICS AND ETHNIC CONFLICT Michael Vickers. Ethnicity and Sub-Nationalism in Nigeria: Movement for a Mid-West State. Oxford: WorldView Publishing, 2001. 410 pp. Maps. Tables. Figures. Bibliography. Index. £49.95. Cloth. £24.95. Paper. Godfrey Mwakikagile. Ethnic Politics in Kenya and Nigeria. Huntington, N.Y.: Nova Science Publishers, 2001. 237 pp. Appendixes. Index. $59.00. Cloth. Rotimi T. Suberu. Federalism and Ethnic Conflict in Nige…
Poison and Medicine
Archaeology in the First Private Museum of Ukraine
Archaeology in the First Private Museum of Ukraine: K. M. Skarzhynskaya's Lubny Museum O. B.Suprunenko Kiev‐PoltavaArheologia 2000392966–02–1866–4
Laconian lead figurines
More than 100,000 lead figurines are reported to have been found in the sanctuary of Artemis Orthia at Sparta. It has been suggested that these mass-produced votives were obtained from locally mined lead. Lead votives in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, were selected as representative of each ‘layer’ from the British excavations of the early twentieth century. Lead isotope analysis of the votives was conducted in the Oxford Laboratory for Archaeolog…
The British-Georgian excavation at Pichvnari 1998
Pichvnari lies on the Black Sea coast of Georgia, at the confluence of the Choloki and Ochkhamuri rivers, some 10km to the north of the town of Kobuleti in the Ajarian Autonomous Republic (fig 1). The site has been known since the 1950s, and excavations were carried out in both the settlement and its various cemeteries in succeeding years, under the auspices of the Batumi Archaeological Museum and the Batumi Research Institute. The site was surve…
Federalism and Ethnic Conflict in Nigeria
FEDERALISM AND ETHNIC CONFLICT IN NIGERIARotimi SuberuWashington DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2001, xxvi, 247pp, $14.95, ISBN 1-929223-28-5ETHNICITY AND SUB-NATIONALISM IN NIGERIAMichael VickersOxford: WorldView, 2000, xviii, 410pp, [Symbol Not Transcribed]49.95 cloth (ISBN 1-872142-43-5), [Symbol Not Transcribed]29.95 paper (ISBN 1-872142-44-3)These ambitious volumes address the development of Nigerian federalism and the complex i…
Ethnicity and Sub-Nationalism in Nigeria
Alcibiades and Aspasia
Antisthenes' conceit that Alcibiades "lay with his mother, his daughter and his sister" is examined for possible grains of truth. The "mother" may have been Aspasia, and the source of the imputation the anecdotal tradition which had its roots in Euripides Hippolytus where, it is argued, the character of Phaedra is modelled on that of Aspasia
Artful Crafts
Pericles on Stage
Since the eighteenth century, classical scholars have generally agreed that the Greek playwright Aristophanes did not as a matter of course write political plays. Yet, according to an anonymous Life of Aristophanes, when Dionysius the tyrant of Syracuse wanted to know about the government of Athens, Plato sent him a copy of Aristophanes' Clouds. In this boldly revisionist work, Michael Vickers convincingly argues that in his earlier plays, Aristo…
The Making of Strategy
Hamilton, geology, stone vases and taste
Journal Article HAMILTON, GEOLOGY, STONE VASES AND TASTE Get access Journal of the History of Collections, Volume 9, Issue 2, 1997, Pages 263–273, https://doi.org/10.1093/jhc/9.2.263 Published: 01 December 1997
Rock crystal
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Sophocles and Alcibiades
Preface 1. The mythologizing of history 2. Antigone, Pericles and Alcibiades 3. Oedipus Tyrannus, Alcibiades, Cleon and Aspasia 4. Ajax, Alcibiades and Andocides 5. Philoctetes, Alcibiades, Andocides and Pericles 6. Alcibiades in exile: Euripides' Cyclops 7. Oedipus at Colonus, Alcibiades and Critias 8. Critias and Alcibiades: Euripides' Bacchae 9. Alcibiades and Melos: Thucydides 5.84-116 10. Thucydides on tyrannicides: not a 'digression' 11. Al…
The Oenoe Painting in the Stoa Poikile, and Herodotus' Account of Marathon
It is argued that the painting in the Stoa Poikile described by Pausanias as an engagement between Athenians and Spartans at Argive Oenoe in fact refers to Oenoe in Attica, and depicted the arrival of the Plataean contingent prior to the battle of Marathon. The dependence of Herodotus on the paintings in the Stoa Poikile for his account of Marathon is discussed
Structure and Conflict in Nigeria 1960-1966
Argive Oenoe
A reassessment of the scanty evidence for a battle between members of an Athenian-Argive alliance and Spartans at Argive Oenoe in the 450s leads to the conclusion that a battle did indeed take place
Fear and Loathing in Ancient Athens
Athens at the time of the Peloponnesian war was the arena for a dramatic battle between politics and religion in the hearts and minds of the people. Fear and Loathing in Ancient Athens, originally published in German but now available for the first time in an expanded and revised English edition, sheds new light on this dramatic period of history and offers a new approach to the study of Greek religion. The book explores an extraordinary range of…
Federalism and Ethnic Conflict in Nigeria
FEDERALISM AND ETHNIC CONFLICT IN NIGERIARotimi SuberuWashington DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2001, xxvi, 247pp, $14.95, ISBN 1-929223-28-5ETHNICITY AND SUB-NATIONALISM IN NIGERIAMichael VickersOxford: WorldView, 2000, xviii, 410pp, [Symbol Not Transcribed]49.95 cloth (ISBN 1-872142-43-5), [Symbol Not Transcribed]29.95 paper (ISBN 1-872142-44-3)These ambitious volumes address the development of Nigerian federalism and the complex i…
Euesperides
There was a time when the Department of Antiquities at the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford was prosperous enough to support a venture which called itself the Ashmolean Expedition to Cyrenaica. The form this exercise took was the excavation over three seasons between 1952 and 1954 of parts of the site of the Greek city of Euesperides situated on the outskirts of Benghazi (Fig. 1 ). Euesperides does not figure large in history. We first hear of it in 51…
Value and Simplicity
Journal Article VALUE AND SIMPLICITY: EIGHTEENTH–CENTURY TASTE AND THE STUDY OF GREEK VASES Get access Michael Vickers Michael Vickers St. Antony's CollegeOxford Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Past & Present, Volume 116, Issue 1, August 1987, Pages 98–137, https://doi.org/10.1093/past/116.1.98 Published: 01 August 1987
Archaic Greek Pottery from Euesperides, Cyrenaica
This summary report on Archaic Greek pottery from Euesperides, Cyrenaica, describes 60 diagnostic sherds of Eastern Greek, ‘Parian’, Laconian, Corinthian and Attic origin. The material all comes from the earliest occupation levels of the Sidi Abeid sector of the ancient site. However, the question of the exact date of the earliest settlement at Euesperides is complicated by a continuing controversy about the dating of Archaic Greek pottery in gen…
Competition and Control in Modern Nigeria
The war between Nigeria and Biafra has ended. The cost has been high for Federal Nigeria, but mostly it is Biafra which will continue to pay the price for failure in its attempt to secure for itself a sovereign republic. This paper will not dwell on the brutalities and horror of the war; all who have been witnesses at first or second hand, or who have simply followed through the press the bloody path of the war will remember long its tragic event…
Pericles on Stage
Since the eighteenth century, classical scholars have generally agreed that the Greek playwright Aristophanes did not as a matter of course write political plays. Yet, according to an anonymous Life of Aristophanes, when Dionysius the tyrant of Syracuse wanted to know about the government of Athens, Plato sent him a copy of Aristophanes' Clouds. In this boldly revisionist work, Michael Vickers convincingly argues that in his earlier plays, Aristo…
Golden Greece
An anecdote told of Socrates provides the starting point for an account of Greek life and art that is somewhat at variance with the usual approach to such issues, which is via the wage of a day laborer. It is clear that there were many, even in Classical Athens, who reckoned their income and expenses in minae rather than in drachmae. But the fortunes of even the richest Greeks were insignificant in comparison with those of wealthy Persians. Athen…
Nigerian Politics and Military Rule
Sophocles and Alcibiades
Literary historians have long held the view that the plays of the Greek dramatist, Sophocles deal purely with archetypes of the heroic past and that any resemblance to contemporary events or individuals is purely coincidental. In this book Michael Vickers challenges this view and argues that Sophocles makes regular and extensive allusion to Athenian politics in his plays, especially to Alcibiades, one of the most controversial Athenian politician…
"Was It Only Yesterday? The Last Generation of Nigeria's "Turawa
Trevor Clark, ed. Was It Only Yesterday? The Last Generation of Nigeria's Turawa. Bristol: British Empire Commonwealth Museum Press, 2002. xi + 352 pp. Photographs. Maps. Appendixes. Bibliography. 5 £25:00. Cloth. 5 £15:00. Paper. This is a remarkable book. Yet it may discomfit many Americans, for it makes clear why the boy scout approach to imperialism may in the end be more successful than the bluntly commercial variety. Indeed it is possible t…
Laconian lead figurines
More than 100,000 lead figurines are reported to have been found in the sanctuary of Artemis Orthia at Sparta. It has been suggested that these mass-produced votives were obtained from locally mined lead. Lead votives in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, were selected as representative of each ‘layer’ from the British excavations of the early twentieth century. Lead isotope analysis of the votives was conducted in the Oxford Laboratory for Archaeolog…
Heracles Lacedaemonius
Tragedy was a frequent vehicle for the allegorical interpretation of historical events, although the language and situations might be employed allusively rather than directly. The mutability of myth, and in particular of myths relating to Heracles, was exploited by Sophocles and Euripides in composing "Trachiniae" and "Heracles". The negative qualities attributed to the hero in these plays can be put down to Heracles' role as the ancestor of the …
Articles
Material values past and present
The attitudes of the ancient Greeks towards their material culture—so far as we can discover from their writings—was rather different from that of most modern students of the remains of classical antiquity. The Greeks esteemed gold and silver vessels, while many archaeologists still believe that they preferred painted pottery. This reversal of classical values came about through the entry of Utopian ideals into the mainstream of classical scholar…
The impoverishment of the past
Dear dead women, with such hair, too - what's become of all the gold'? ROBERT BROWNING, 'A toccata of Galuppi's' What became of most of the Classical gold and silver, argues Michael Vickers, is that it went into the melting pot, with exceptions like the Sevso treasure recently brought to public spectacle. Classical ceramics, more commonplace and with nil potential for recycling, have been luckier in their survival. Those accidents of later histor…
The British-Georgian excavation at Pichvnari 1998
Pichvnari lies on the Black Sea coast of Georgia, at the confluence of the Choloki and Ochkhamuri rivers, some 10km to the north of the town of Kobuleti in the Ajarian Autonomous Republic (fig 1). The site has been known since the 1950s, and excavations were carried out in both the settlement and its various cemeteries in succeeding years, under the auspices of the Batumi Archaeological Museum and the Batumi Research Institute. The site was surve…
Alcibiades at Sparta
Although there is a long tradition, going back at least to the tenth century, that would see Aristophanes' Birds (performed in the spring of 414 B.C.) as somehow related to the exile in Lacedaemon of Alcibiades, and to the fortification of the Attic township of Decelea by his Spartan hosts ( Arg. Av . 1 Coulon), current scholarship surrounding Birds is firmly in the hands of those who are antipathetic to seeing the creation of Cloudcuckooland in …
Thucydides 6.53.3-59
The passage in Thucydides Book 6 (53.3-59) dealing the circumstances which Hipparchus, the son of the sixth century Athenian tyrant Pisistratus had assassinated, comes in the middle of Thucydides' account of Alcibiades' recall exile (53.1-2 ; 60-61). It is usually called a "digression" or an "excursus", but far being unconnected with the rest of the narrative, it is a carefully composed whose purpose is to suggest that Alcibiades was considerably…
The Marathon Epigram in the Stoa Poikile
Ivory Tusks’from Al Mina
Structure and Conflict in Nigeria 1960-1966
Biafra
The Date of the Mosaics of the Rotunda at Thessaloniki
In a recent important article on the mosaics of the basilica of St. Demetrius at Thessaloniki, R. S. Cormack proposes a list of churches in the city with mosaics ‘for which a late fifth century date must be considered.’ The list comprises the Acheiropoietos basilica, the first phase of the basilica of St. Demetrius, and Hosios David. The purpose of this article is to show that the mosaics of the second phase of the Rotunda (now known as the churc…
Competition and Control in Modern Nigeria
The war between Nigeria and Biafra has ended. The cost has been high for Federal Nigeria, but mostly it is Biafra which will continue to pay the price for failure in its attempt to secure for itself a sovereign republic. This paper will not dwell on the brutalities and horror of the war; all who have been witnesses at first or second hand, or who have simply followed through the press the bloody path of the war will remember long its tragic event…
A Note on the Byzantine Palace at Thessaloniki
There are several buildings at Thessaloniki that can be dated to the middle or second half of the fifth century A.D. and which have one feature in common, namely, the characteristic brick stamps illustrated in Figs, 1 a and b. Bricks bearing these stamps occur in the following buildings: Acheiropoietos, the first phase of St. Demetrius, the city walls, and the second phase of the Rotunda. The conventional date for the Acheiropoietos basilica is c…
Nigerian Politics and Military Rule
Old and New From Perinthus
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The Hippodrome at Thessaloniki
The hippodrome at Thessaloniki is well known as the scene of the bloodbath of A.D. 390, so vividly described by Gibbon. This occurred when the emperor Theodosius, enraged that his magister militum Buthericus had been killed in a riot, enticed people into the hippodrome by the promise of games, and had between 7,000 and 15,000 put to death. But apart from the events connected with this incident, the ancient sources are silent concerning the hippod…
Aspects of the Circus at Lepcis Magna
By kind permission of the Department of Antiquities and of Professor Antonino Di Vita, Director of the Italian Mission, and with the financial support of the Society for Libyan Studies, the Oxford Craven Committee and the Cambridge Faculty Board of Classics, the authors spent three weeks in the early summer of 1974 studying the circus at Lepcis Magna. During the sixty years in which Italian archaeologists have been working at Lepcis, parts of the…
Observations on the Octagon at Thessaloniki
One of the most remarkable buildings to have been discovered in the area of the Tetrarchic palace at Thessaloniki is the Octagon. Although known since 1950, it has not really been granted the attention that it warrants. The following pages are an attempt to remedy this situation. I. A Description of the Remains First, a brief description of the surviving remains which were found on the site of the Akçe Mecidiye mosque about 50 m west of the Hippo…
Fifth-century Brickstamps from Thessaloniki
In recent articles the present writer has used the evidence of brickstamps in proposing new dates for the walls of Thessaloniki, for the mosaics of the second phase of the Rotunda (now dedicated to St. George), and for the Byzantine palace. In each case, reference was made to only two or three examples, and it is with a view to reinforcing and developing the arguments already expressed that all the published fifth-century brickstamps recognizable…
An Elizabethan Contact with Greece
Among the papers of Patrick Young preserved in the Bodleian Library at Oxford is a copy of a translation into Greek of a licence granted by Elizabeth I in 1597 for the collection of alms towards the ransom of the sons of the murdered metropolitan of Thessaloniki. The document is remarkable for several reasons: it is an early example of English sympathy for Greeks suffering under Turkish oppression: it includes the only account, so far as one can …
An Ex-Rattling Cup in Oxford
Recent Acquisitions by the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
Two More Rattling Cups
A Kottabos Cup in Oxford
Columns in Antis in the Temple on the Ilissus
The small Ionic temple that once stood on the banks of the Ilissus has now all but disappeared. Converted into a Christian church during the Turkish occupation, it was completely dismantled in 1778 to provide material for the new fortification walls of Athens. Fortunately, before its final destruction the temple was visited by the English travellers J. Stuart and N. Revett and its appearance, plan (Fig. 1), and dimensions have been preserved by t…
A Dirty Trick Vase
Structure and Conflict in Nigeria 1960-1966
Cyriac of Ancona at Thessaloniki
At some time in 1431, Cyriac of Ancona visited Thessaloniki, a visit that seems hitherto to have passed unnoticed by scholars who have worked on the history and monuments of that city. A brief account of his stay is to be found in the life compiled by Cyriac’s friend Francesco Scalamonti and completed in 1464. A manuscript copy of Scalamonti’s work by Felice Feliciano is preserved in the Biblioteca Capitolare in Treviso, but the only published ve…
Structure and Conflict in Nigeria 1960-1966
Another Dirty Trick Vase
Hellas. The Civilizations of Ancient Greece
Ivory Tusks’from Al Mina
Amasis and Lindos
AMASIS AND LINDOS Get access E.D. Francis, E.D. Francis Magdalen College, OxfordUniversity of Texas at Austin (E.D.F.)Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (M.V.) Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Michael Vickers Michael Vickers Magdalen College, OxfordUniversity of Texas at Austin (E.D.F.)Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (M.V.) Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Bulletin of the Institute of…
Green Goddess
History (54 works) · Art (49 works) · Archaeology (32 works) · History (32 works) · Ancient history (30 works) · Classical Antiquity Studies (30 works) · Ancient Mediterranean Archaeology and History (23 works) · Political science (22 works) · Philosophy (19 works) · Classics (17 works)